(born Oct. 24, 1954, Ottawa, Ont.), On March 24, 2012, Tom Mulcair defeated six other candidates to become the leader of Canada’s centre-left New Democratic Party (NDP), a position left vacant by the unexpected death in 2011 of former leader Jack Layton. Mulcair, who won with 57.22% of the vote on the convention’s fourth ballot, also became Canada’s leader of the Official Opposition in Parliament—only the second permanent NDP leader in the country’s history to hold the honour.

Thomas Joseph Mulcair was raised in largely Francophone Quebec, where his maternal great-great-grandfather had served as premier in the 1880s. He was the second oldest of 10 children and was brought up in a devoutly Roman Catholic, staunchly Liberal, and mostly Anglophone home. Mulcair was a strong student and athlete. He became interested in politics at a young age, and he became an activist at Vanier College, Montreal, where he helped lead a student strike. He studied law at McGill University, Montreal, and, after passing the bar, worked at the legislative-affairs branch of Quebec’s Justice Ministry and at the Legal Affairs Directorate of the Conseil Supérieur de la Langue Française, and he served as president of the Quebec Professions Board. In 1976 Mulcair married Catherine Pinhas, who helped him to achieve bilingual fluency.

Mulcair was first elected to the Quebec National Assembly, as a Liberal in the riding of Chomedey, in 1994; during his three terms in the provincial legislature, he served as critic (spokesperson) for justice and industry while in opposition and minister of sustainable development, environment, and parks when the Liberals formed a government in 2003. Mulcair left the government after he suffered a falling-out in 2006 with Quebec Liberal Premier Jean Charest over a plan to transfer land from the Mont Orford provincial park to condominium developers. He switched to federal politics, and in 2007 he opted to become NDP leader Layton’s Quebec lieutenant. A stunning by-election victory in the previously Liberal stronghold of Outremont made Mulcair only the second-ever NDP MP to be elected in the province. After successfully retaining the seat in a general election the following year, Mulcair helped build the profile of the party in the province as deputy leader. He was credited in part with its enormously successful 2011 election campaign, in which an NDP “Orange Wave” claimed 59 of the province’s 75 seats, virtually wiping out the previously dominant separatist Bloc Québécois.

Although Mulcair’s critics called him difficult to work with and prone to angry outbursts—he was fined $95,000 for vulgar and defamatory comments made against a former provincial minister on television—his supporters praised his intelligence and political acumen. Mulcair used both assets to present himself as a formidable opponent for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

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